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Design for 3D Printing on the Web or in Virtual Reality with Leopoly’s Creative Suite

Design for 3D printing is hard. You can go buy the MakerBot Digitizer for $1,400, or you can use some free software like Autodesk 123D Catch. But what if you want to design something creative, from scratch?

Leopoly may be your answer to the fastest and easiest way to make a novel design in minutes.

Leopoly is a web-based product that lets you sculpt in 3D. You literally start with a digital ball of clay, and push it and pull it until you have something you like. It was created by Leonar3Do International, a 3D tech startup company, founded in 2010 and based in Budapest, Hungary. The company has become a pioneer and award-winning provider of 3D solutions aimed at the educational, healthcare, gaming industry and general business market.

Here is a sophisticated design of an alien bust, created in Leopoly and ready to be 3D printed.

Leopoly has a key innovation: crowd-sculpting

“The idea behind the software is to give the easiest 3D sculpting tool and a community-based game experience to the makers of the 21st century,” said Daniel Andrassy from Leopoly. “This new way of virtual sculpting is but a part of evolutionary modeling, where all users can share creative designs and further shape ones pieces of art.”

To put this simply, you can start with a ball of clay, or you can start with someone else’s design and extend it. Community is at the heart of the online service.

“With Leopoly we break down boundaries. Leopoly narrows the gap between hardly reachable level of proficiency and novice enthusiasts in 3D design and printing” said Roland Mányai, Director of Sales and Marketing. “Our goal was to make this project on a web based platform, to open doors to anyone and make it reachable literally anywhere for a wider community of makers and to make 3D modeling fun.”

And here is a Shrek design that might need a few more iterations in the crowd.

Here is a video demo of the Leopoly web tool.

3D modeling in virtual reality

Leonar3Do also sells software with a 3D immersive mode that pairs with the Leonar3Do VR Hardware Kit. This lets users break out of the 2D approach and work in virtual space using head tracked goggles and the Bird, a 3D mouse which sells for $500 alone or $2000 bundled with software.

Watch the video below for a demo.

3D Printing Your Design

Leopoly doesn’t have it’s own 3D printing service, but you can directly 3D print the objects you create through Sculpteo‘s cloud 3D printing service.

Sculpteo will import your design, give you a choice of materials, and provide a cost and shipping estimate. Sculpteo announced this partnership on their blog last month, saying “All you need to do is to click on 3D print, and you’ll be able to order a print from Sculpteo. With Leopoly, 3D printing is just one click away.”

We gave this whole process a test drive. We were able to create a relatively complex model in just a few minutes on Leopoly, and then send it over to Sculpteo where we could choose from an array of materials. We chose white plastic for $10.57, shipping in 3 days.

eBay Exact is an iPhone App for 3D Printed Goods

Leading auction marketplace eBay is the latest major e-commerce company getting into 3D printing, following the recent news by Amazon, Tesco, and others. eBay launched an iPhone app called eBay Exact that lets users customize and order 3D printed goods.

How eBay Exact Works

eBay has partnered with 3D printing companies and designers, including MakerBot, Sculpteo, and Hot Pop Factory, to source 3D printed goods that can be customized and purchased.

Here’s the description from the eBay Exact product page:

Unleash your creativity by customizing select products to create exactly what you want with eBay Exact. Simply select a product, choose a design, and add your own personal flair to create a unique item for yourself or someone special!

With our first foray into 3D printing technology, we have partnered with Sculpteo, MakerBot, and Hot Pop Factory who are leaders in 3D printing technology to hand-select a range of special products including, iPhone cases, figurines, and jewelry.

Take the power of creation into your own hands and download the app now to start customizing right away.

Bring your style to life. Choose from a variety of materials, including plastics, wood and metals. Use the engraving feature to further customize your product.

Be the first to use new technology to create one-of-a-kind iPhone cases, jewelry, and figurines based on self-portraits.

Build your collection. Whether you love jewelry or figurines, eBay Exact allows you to create as many unique products, exactly as you like, based on your personal desires and preferences.

Reviews

There are just a few reviews so far, but some of them are glowing.

“Really cool app that gives affordable access to 3D Printers. I’d love to see more templates to customize and buy. Opening up to user generated content – a deviantart like community for 3D models would really make this a very addictive app!”

“App is beautiful- first company to do something like this, impressive.”

Below is a gallery that shows how you can discover an item, customize it and preview your design before ordering it.

Get the app for iPhone and iPad at iTunes or learn more about eBay Exact at eBay.

Competition Ends June 30 – Win an Ultimaker 3D Printer from CGTrader

As we reported in may, 3D model marketplace CGTrader is hosting a 3D printing competition, looking for innovative 3D printable models. Winning submissions will receive great prizes, including two Ultimaker 3D printers, 3D prints, gift cards from Sculpteo, Filaco, Stash, as well as an opportunity to sell designs in 3D printing store iMakr in London

3D Printing Competition at CGTrader

3D model marketplace CGTrader is hosting a 3D printing competition. The company is looking for innovative 3D printable models and are giving away great prizes, including two Ultimaker 3D printers, 3D prints, gift cards from Sculpteo, Filaco, Stash, as well as an opportunity to sell designs in 3D printing store iMakr in London.

We talked with CGTrader’s Dalia Lasaite about the competition and the marketplace.

On 3D Printing: What is CGTrader and why are you running this competition?

Dalia Lasaite: CGTrader is a designer-friendly 3D model marketplace for artists and designers. We aim to offer the best conditions for both sellers and buyers of 3D models – the authors on our marketplace receive over 90% of royalties, and can interact directly with the buyers, thereby landing additional jobs or establishing relationships. On the other side, the buyers enjoy direct contact with the sellers, low prices, as well as high quality of the models. Our aim is to make sure that talented designers can make a living off creating and selling professional-level, high-quality 3D models. The 3D models traded on CGTrader are used in a variety of fields, including games, visualizations, ads, architecture, simulations – and now, increasingly, in 3D printing.

The 3D printing industry is rapidly developing, and we noticed increasing interest in this technology from both buyers and sellers on our marketplace. In order to encourage our designer community to step into this exciting field, we decided to start this competition and challenge them to create 3D printable models. While majority of 3D designers have primarily worked in digital domains, they typically have very strong 3D modeling skills and unlimited creativity, but may have not tried using a 3D printer or designing for 3D printing – so this competition was a natural step and had a very positive reception.

On 3D Printing: We’re not quite halfway through the competition yet. Are you seeing any submissions that excite you yet?

Dalia Lasaite: We’re always amazed by the creativity of the 3D designer community! The submissions started rolling in recently, but we’ve already seen a whole spectrum of models from useful to beautiful to crazy. Steampunk-based alphabet letters, parts for coffee machines, Escher sculptures, graffiti spray gun, cars, characters, toys – you name it! And of course, there is the Robohand, whereby you can actually print the whole prosthetic hand – definitely changing the world for the better. There are a few submissions representing the first 3D printable model of designers – and it is great to see how willing they are to learn and pick up this technology.

Dalia Lasaite: Yes, and not one – but two 3D printers! We’re very excited to work with Ultimaker for this competition. Ultimaker printer is one of the best printers on the market right now. It has a large build volume, is very fast, and delivers high-quality prints. When organizing the competition we discussed it with several experts, and all recommendations pointed to Ultimaker – so it was fairly easy to choose.

We also have other awesome sponsors – including 3D Print UK, iMakr, Sculpteo, Filaco, Stash – the winners of this challenge will be very lucky!

On 3D Printing: What’s the future hold for CGTrader?

Dalia Lasaite: CGTrader aims to be the largest 3D model marketplace for professional level, high-quality 3D models. It is hard to say how the 3D printing industry will develop during the coming years – but our goal is to help designers monetize their creations, and provide the buyers with a wide selection of 3D models directly from designers. At the same time, we hope to contribute to the growth of the industry by providing a place to trade 3D models and encourage more designers to try their hand in this field.

Inside 3D Printing Conference

In a context that felt a bit like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, this week 3D printing went to New York for the first ever Inside 3D Printing Conference. Over two full days at the Javits Convention Center in Manhattan, a broad array of industry leaders, innovators, academics and analysts gave keynotes, led seminars, and showed off their latest products to over 3,000 conference attendees. For many in the crowd, this was a crash course on a technology that has been exploding in the public consciousness over the past two years, and for others it was a chance to network, hear from big names in the industry, and get a sense for where 3D printing will go next.

In a role that seemed fitting given his company’s leadership in the industry and status as the conference’s primary sponsor, 3D Systems CEO Avi Reichental opened the conference with the declaration, “Complexity is free” in a 3D printed world. Never before, he underlined, has a manufacturing process been indifferent to geometric complexity, and to him this is the single biggest reason 3D printing will continue to grow and expand into sectors ranging from education to medical devices to automotive and aerospace.

Outside the seminar room the conference also had a distinctly hands-on element. A bustling exhibit hall hosted dozens of booths showing off a variety of consumer and enterprise 3D printers along with more curious technologies like 3D scanners and novel CAD input devices. 3D printing service companies were also eager to engage with potential customers, showing high quality parts available for remote ordering online.

While many sides of the industry were highlighted at the inaugural Inside 3D Printing Conference this week, the underlying theme was very clear: while 3D printing technology may have existed in research labs and niche applications since the 1980s and ‘90s, it is only now beginning to truly change our lives in meaningful ways. And from the number of times speakers said “Nascent,” “Just the first inning,” or “Only scratching the surface” to describe the state of the industry, it is clear that insiders see the eventual impact that 3D printing will make on the world to be profound, far-reaching, and on a larger scale than most casual observers can imagine today.